Ubaid period
The Ubaid period is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from Tell al-'Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted by Henry Hall and by Leonard Woolley. In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain although it is earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium. In the south it has a long duration between about 6500 and 3800 BC when it is replaced by the Uruk period. In North Mesopotamia the period runs only between about 5300 and 4300 BC, it is preceded by the Halaf period and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period and succeeded by the Late Chalcolithic period. The term "Ubaid period" was coined at a conference in Baghdad in 1930, where at the same time the Jemdet Nasr and Uruk periods were defined; the Ubaid period is divided into four principal phases: Ubaid 0, sometimes called Oueili, an early Ubaid phase first excavated at Tell el-'Oueili Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu corresponding to the city Eridu, a phase limited to the extreme south of Iraq, on what was the shores of the Persian Gulf.
This phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north, saw the establishment of the first permanent settlement south of the 5 inch rainfall isohyet. These people pioneered the growing of grains in the extreme conditions of aridity, thanks to the high water tables of Southern Iraq. Ubaid 2, after the type site of the same name, saw the development of extensive canal networks from major settlements. Irrigation agriculture, which seems to have developed first at Choga Mami and spread elsewhere, form the first required collective effort and centralised coordination of labour in Mesopotamia. Ubaid 3/4, sometimes called Ubaid I and Ubaid II — In the period from 4500–4000 BC saw a period of intense and rapid urbanisation with the Ubaid culture spread into northern Mesopotamia and was adopted by the Halaf culture. Ubaid artifacts spread all along the Arabian littoral, showing the growth of a trading system that stretched from the Mediterranean coast through to Oman. Spreading from Eridu, the Ubaid culture extended from the Middle of the Tigris and Euphrates to the shores of the Persian Gulf, spread down past Bahrain to the copper deposits at Oman.
The archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BC, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation. At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, there is no evidence of human presence in the area for 1,000 years, the so-called "Dark Millennium"; that might be due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron. Ubaid culture is characterized by large unwalled village settlements, multi-roomed rectangular mud-brick houses and the appearance of the first temples of public architecture in Mesopotamia, with a growth of a two tier settlement hierarchy of centralized large sites of more than 10 hectares surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1 hectare. Domestic equipment included a distinctive fine quality buff or greenish colored pottery decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint, but in the north and sometimes metal were used. Villages thus contained specialised craftspeople, potters and metalworkers, although the bulk of the population were agricultural labourers and seasonal pastoralists.
During the Ubaid Period, the movement towards urbanization began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry were practiced in sedentary communities". There were tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, as far south as the Zagros Mountains; the Ubaid period in the south was associated with intensive irrigated hydraulic agriculture, the use of the plough, both introduced from the north through the earlier Choga Mami, Hadji Muhammed and Samarra cultures. The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility. Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order.
It would seem that various collective methods instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were resolved through a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community. Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq; the appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumerian civilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts. Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oecumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place through the peaceful spre
Dirham
Dirham, dirhem or dirhm was and, in some cases, still is a unit of currency in several Arab states. It was the related unit of mass in the Ottoman Empire and old Persian states; the name derives from the name of drachma. The dirham was a unit of weight used across North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, with varying values. In the late Ottoman Empire, the standard dirham was 3.207 g. The Ottoman dirham was based on the Sassanian drachm, itself based on the Roman dram/drachm. In Egypt in 1895, it was equivalent to 47.661 troy grains. There is a movement within the Islamic world to revive the Dirham as a unit of mass for measuring silver, although the exact value is disputed; the word "dirham" comes from the Greek coin. The Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire controlled the Levant and traded with Arabia, circulating the coin there in pre-Islamic times and afterward, it was this currency, adopted as an Arab word. The dirham was struck in many Mediterranean countries, including Al-Andalus and the Byzantine Empire, could be used as currency in Europe between the 10th and 12th centuries, notably in areas with Viking connections, such as Viking York and Dublin.
The dirham is mentioned in Jewish orthodox law as a unit of weight used to measure various requirements in religious functions, such as the weight in silver specie pledged in Marriage Contracts, the quantity of flour requiring the separation of the dough-portion, etc. Jewish physician and philosopher, uses the Egyptian dirham to approximate the quantity of flour for dough-portion, writing in Mishnah Eduyot 1:2: "... And I found the rate of the dough-portion in that measurement to be five-hundred and twenty dirhams of wheat flour, while all these dirhams are the Egyptian." This view is repeated by Maran's Shulhan Arukh in the name of the Tur. In Maimonides' commentary of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yosef Qafih explains that the weight of each Egyptian dirham was 3.333 grammes, or what was the equivalent to 16 carob-grains which, when taken together, the minimum weight of flour requiring the separation of the dough-portion comes to approx. 1 kilo and 733 grammes. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, in his Sefer Halikhot ʿOlam, makes use of a different standard for the Egyptian dirham, saying that it weighed approx.
3.0 grammes, meaning the minimum requirement for separating the priest's portion is 1 kilo and 560 grammes. Others say. 3.205 grammes, which total weight for the requirement of separating the dough-portion comes to 1 kilo and 666 grammes. Rabbi Shelomo Qorah writes that the traditional weight used in Yemen for each dirham weighed 3.36 grammes, making the total weight for the required separation of the dough-portion to be 1 kilo and 770.72 grammes. The word drachmon, used in some translations of Maimonides' commentary of the Mishnah, has in all places the same connotation as dirham; the valid national currencies with the name dirham are: the Moroccan dirham the United Arab Emirates dirham the Armenian dramModern currencies with the subdivision dirham or diram are: 1 Libyan dinar is subdivided into 1,000 Dirham 1 Qatari riyal is subdivided into 100 Dirham 1 Jordanian dinar is subdivided into 10 Dirham 1 Tajikistani somoni is subdivided into 100 DiramAlso the unofficial modern gold dinar is divided into dirham.
Dinar Gold dinar Fals
Abbasid Caliphate
The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib, from whom the dynasty takes its name, they ruled as caliphs for most of the caliphate from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, after having overthrown the Umayyad Caliphate in the Abbasid Revolution of 750 CE. The Abbasid Caliphate first centred its government in Kufa, modern-day Iraq, but in 762 the caliph Al-Mansur founded the city of Baghdad, near the ancient Sasanian capital city of Ctesiphon; the Abbasid period was marked by reliance on Persian bureaucrats for governing the territories as well as an increasing inclusion of non-Arab Muslims in the ummah. Persianate customs were broadly adopted by the ruling elite, they began patronage of artists and scholars. Baghdad became a centre of science, culture and invention in what became known as the Golden Age of Islam. Despite this initial cooperation, the Abbasids of the late 8th century had alienated both non-Arab mawali and Iranian bureaucrats.
They were forced to cede authority over al-Andalus to the Umayyads in 756, Morocco to the Idrisid dynasty in 788, Ifriqiya to the Aghlabids in 800 and Egypt to the Isma'ili-Shia caliphate of the Fatimids in 969. The political power of the caliphs ended with the rise of the Iranian Buyids and the Seljuq Turks, who captured Baghdad in 945 and 1055, respectively. Although Abbasid leadership over the vast Islamic empire was reduced to a ceremonial religious function, the dynasty retained control over its Mesopotamian domain; the Abbasids' period of cultural fruition ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan. The Abbasid line of rulers, Muslim culture in general, re-centred themselves in the Mamluk capital of Cairo in 1261. Though lacking in political power, the dynasty continued to claim religious authority until after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517; the Abbasid caliphs were Arabs descended from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, one of the youngest uncles of Muhammad and of the same Banu Hashim clan.
The Abbasids claimed to be the true successors of Prophet Muhammad in replacing the Umayyad descendants of Banu Umayya by virtue of their closer bloodline to Muhammad. The Abbasids distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their moral character and administration in general. According to Ira Lapidus, "The Abbasid revolt was supported by Arabs the aggrieved settlers of Merv with the addition of the Yemeni faction and their Mawali"; the Abbasids appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of the Arabs and were perceived as a lower class within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn'Ali, a great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign in Persia for the return of power to the family of Prophet Muhammad, the Hashimites, during the reign of Umar II. During the reign of Marwan II, this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas. Supported by the province of Khorasan though the governor opposed them, the Shia Arabs, he achieved considerable success, but was captured in the year 747 and died assassinated, in prison.
On 9 June 747, Abu Muslim, rising from Khorasan initiated an open revolt against Umayyad rule, carried out under the sign of the Black Standard. Close to 10,000 soldiers were under Abu Muslim's command when the hostilities began in Merv. General Qahtaba followed the fleeing governor Nasr ibn Sayyar west defeating the Umayyads at the Battle of Gorgan, the Battle of Nahāvand and in the Battle of Karbala, all in the year 748; the quarrel was taken up by Ibrahim's brother Abdallah, known by the name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who defeated the Umayyads in 750 in the battle near the Great Zab and was subsequently proclaimed caliph. After this loss, Marwan fled to Egypt; the remainder of his family, barring one male, were eliminated. After their victory, As-Saffah sent his forces to Central Asia, where his forces fought against Tang expansion during the Battle of Talas; the noble Iranian family Barmakids, who were instrumental in building Baghdad, introduced the world's first recorded paper mill in the city, thus beginning a new era of intellectual rebirth in the Abbasid domain.
As-Saffah focused on putting down numerous rebellions in Mesopotamia. The Byzantines conducted raids during these early distractions; the first change the Abbasids, under Al-Mansur, made was to move the empire's capital from Damascus, in Syria, to Baghdad in Iraq. This was to both appease as well to be closer to the Persian mawali support base that existed in this region more influenced by Persian history and culture, part of the Persian mawali demand for less Arab dominance in the empire. Baghdad was established on the Tigris River in 762. A new position, that of the vizier, was established to delegate central authority, greater authority was delegated to local emirs; this meant that many Abbasid caliphs were relegated to a more ceremonial role than under the Umayyads, as the viziers began to exert greater influence, the role of the old Arab aristocracy was replaced by a Persian bureaucracy. During Al-Mansur's time control of Al-Andalus was lost, the Shia revolted and were defeated a year at the Battle of Bakhamra.
The Abbasids had depended on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads. Abu al-'Abbas' successor, Al-Mansur welcomed non-Arab Musli
British Museum
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been sourced during the era of the British Empire, it documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world; the British Museum was established in 1753 based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened in Montagu House, on the site of the current building, its expansion over the following 250 years was a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997.
The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture and Sport, as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions. Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, most notably in the case of the Parthenon Marbles. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum", its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. During the course of his lifetime, after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Greece, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.
On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford, they were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf; the British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests; the addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library.
The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time, the largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson, employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus, Daniel Solander to reclassify the natural history collection according to the Linnaean system, thereby making the Museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians.
In 1823, King George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick's library of 1,000 printed plays; the predominance of natural history and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton's "first" collection of Greek vases. From 1778, a display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of unknown lands; the bequest of a collection of books, engraved gems, coins and drawings by Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode in 1800 did much to raise the museum's reputation. The museum's first notable addition towards its collection of antiquities, since its foundation, was by Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to Naples, who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to
Great Mosque of Samarra
The Great Mosque of Samarra is a ninth-century mosque located in Samarra, Iraq. The mosque was commissioned in 848 and completed in 851 by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil who reigned from 847 until 861; the mosque is located within the 15,058-hectare Samarra Archaeological City UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 2007. The Great Mosque of Samarra was, for a time, the largest mosque in the world; the reign of al-Mutawakkil had a great effect on the appearance of the city, for he seems to have been a lover of architecture, the one responsible for building the great Mosque of Samarra. In a list of his building projects which appears in several different versions, the new Congregational Mosque and up to twenty palaces are mentioned, totalling between 258 and 294 million dirhams; the new Congregational Mosque, with its spiral minaret, built between 849 and 851, formed part of an extension of the city to the east, extending into the old hunting park. The mosque itself was destroyed in 1278 after Hulagu Khan's invasion of Iraq.
Only the outer wall and its minaret remain. The mosque had 17 aisles, its walls were paneled with mosaics of dark blue glass, it was part of an extension of Samarra eastwards. The art and architecture of the mosque were influential. Additionally, the mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, Egypt was based on the Samarra mosque in many regards; the Malwiya Minaret is part of the Great Mosque of Samarra. The minaret was connected to the mosque by a bridge; the minaret or tower was constructed in 848–852 of sandstone, is unique among other minarets because of its ascending spiral conical design. 52 metres high and 33 metres wide at the base, the spiral contains stairs reaching to the top. The word "malwiya" translates as "twisted" or "snail shell."The Malwiya was used for the "call to prayer". It is visible from a considerable distance in the area around Samarra and therefore may have been designed as a strong visual statement of the presence of Islam in the Tigris Valley; the minaret's unique spiral design is said by some to be derived from the architecture of the Mesopotamian ziggurats.
Some consider the influence of the Pillar of Gor, built in Sassanian period, more prominent. The minaret's spiral shape inspired Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Philip Johnson's design for the 1976 Chapel of Thanksgiving at Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas, Texas. In 2005 the top of the Malwiya minaret was damaged by a bomb. Iraqi police said insurgents blew up the top section of the 52-metre tower, used by US soldiers as a lookout position, although US troops had pulled out of the site a month before. Firuzabad, Fars Chogha Zanbil The Wonderful Barn The Great Mosque, Iraq "Samarra Archaeological City". World Heritage Site. UNESCO. 2019. Photo of The Great Mosque Photo and information Photos, floor plans, information Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Series 7: Records of Samarra Expeditions, Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil Collections Search Center, S. I. R. I. S. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Series 7: Records of Samarra Expeditions, 1906-1945 Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Washington, DC
Harun al-Rashid
Harun al-Rashid was the fifth Abbasid Caliph. His birth date is debated, with various sources giving dates from 763 to 766, his epithet "al-Rashid" translates to "the Orthodox," "the Just," "the Upright," or "the Rightly-Guided." Al-Rashid ruled during the peak of the Islamic Golden Age. He established the legendary library Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad in present-day Iraq, during his rule Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge and trade. During his rule, the family of Barmakids, which played a deciding role in establishing the Abbasid Caliphate, declined gradually. In 796, he moved his government to Raqqa in present-day Syria. A Frankish mission came to offer Harun friendship in 799. Harun sent various presents with the emissaries on their return to Charlemagne's court, including a clock that Charlemagne and his retinue deemed to be a conjuration because of the sounds it emanated and the tricks it displayed every time an hour ticked. Portions of the fictional One Thousand and One Nights are set in Harun's court and some of its stories involve Harun himself.
Harun's life and court have been the subject of both factual and fictitious. Some of the Twelver sect of Shia Muslims blame Harun for his supposed role in the murder of their 7th Imam. Hārūn was born in Rey part of Jibal in the Abbasid Caliphate, in present-day Tehran Province, Iran, he was the son of al-Mahdi, the third Abbasid caliph, al-Khayzuran, a former slave girl from Yemen, a woman of strong personality and who influenced affairs of state in the reigns of her husband and sons. Before becoming caliph, in 780 and again in 782, Hārūn had nominally led campaigns against the Caliphate's traditional enemy, the Eastern Roman Empire, under the rule of empress Irene of Athens; the latter expedition was a huge undertaking, reached the Asian suburbs of Constantinople. Hārūn became caliph in 786. On the day of accession, his son al-Ma'mun was born, al-Amin some little time later: the latter was the son of Zubaida, a granddaughter of al-Mansur, he began his reign by appointing able ministers, who carried on the work of the government so well that they improved the condition of the people.
It was under Hārūn ar-Rashīd. Tribute was paid by many rulers to the caliph, these funds were used on architecture, the arts and a luxurious life at court. In 796, Hārūn decided to move the government to Raqqa at the middle Euphrates. Here he spent most of his reign. Only once did he return to Baghdad for a short visit. Several reasons might have influenced the decision to move to Raqqa, it was close to the Byzantine border. The communication lines via the Euphrates to Baghdad and via the Balikh river to the north and via Palmyra to Damascus were excellent; the agriculture was flourishing to support the new Imperial center. And from Raqqa any rebellion in Syria and the middle Euphrates area could be controlled. Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani pictures in his anthology of poems the splendid life in his court. In Raqqa the Barmekids managed the fate of the empire, there both heirs, al-Amin and al-Ma'mun grew up. For the administration of the whole empire, he fell back on his mentor and longtime associate Yahya bin Khalid bin Barmak.
Rashid appointed him as his vizier with full executive powers, for seventeen years, this man Yahya and his sons, served Rashid faithfully in whatever assignment he entrusted to them. Harun made pilgrimages to Mecca several times, e.g. 793, 795, 797, 802 and last in 803. Tabari concludes his account of Harun's reign with these words: "It has been said that when Harun ar-Rashid died, there were nine hundred million odd in the state treasury." Hārūn was influenced by the will of his mother in the governance of the empire until her death in 789. His vizier Yahya the Barmakid, Yahya's sons, other Barmakids controlled the administration; the position of Persians in the Abbasid caliphal court reached its peak during al-Rashid's reign. The Barmakids were a Persian family that dated back to the Barmak a hereditary Buddhist priest of Nava Vihara, who converted after the Islamic conquest of Balkh and became powerful under al-Mahdi. Yahya had helped Hārūn in obtaining the caliphate, he and his sons were in high favor until 798, when the caliph threw them in prison and confiscated their land.
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari dates this in 803 and lists various accounts for the cause: Yahya's entering the Caliph's presence without permission. The fall of the Barmakids is far more due to their behaving in a manner that Harun found disrespectful and making decisions in matters of state without first consulting him. Al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi succeeded Yahya the Barmakid as Harun's chief minister. Both Einhard and Notker the Stammerer refer to envoys travelling between Harun's and Charlemagne's courts, amicable discussions concerning Christian access to the Holy Land and the exchange of gifts. Notker mentions Charlemagne sent Harun Spanish horses, colorful Frisian cloaks and impressive hunting dogs. In 802 Harun sent Charlemagne a present consisting of silks, brass candelabra, perfume
Ernst Herzfeld
Ernst Emil Herzfeld was a German archaeologist and Iranologist. Herzfeld was born in Province of Hanover, he studied architecture in Munich and Berlin, while taking classes in Assyriology, ancient history and art history. From 1903 to 1905 he was assistant to Walter Andrae in the acclaimed excavations of Assur, traveled in Iraq and Iran at the beginning of the twentieth century, he surveyed and documented many historical sites in Turkey, Syria and most in Iraq. At Samarra he carried out the first excavations of an Islamic period site in 1911–13. After military service during World War I he was appointed full professor of "Landes- und Altertumskunde des Orients" in Berlin in 1920; this was the first professorship for Near/Middle Eastern archaeology in the world. From 1923 to 1925 he started explorations in Persia and described many of the countries' most important ruins for the first time. In 1925 he moved to Tehran and stayed there most of the time until 1934, he was instrumental in creating a Persian law of antiquities and excavated in the Achaemenid capitals Pasargadae and Persepolis.
He left Iran at the end of 1934 for a year in London, but never returned. In 1935, he was forced to leave his position in Germany because of his Jewish descent, became a faculty member of the New Jersey Institute for Advanced Study from 1936 to 1944, he died in Basel, Switzerland in 1948. The bulk of the Ernst Herzfeld Papers are housed in the archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC; the material, some 30,000 documents include his field notebooks, photographs and object inventories from his excavations at Samarra, Persepolis and elsewhere in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The archives are open by appointment Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Other Herzfeld research materials, notes and drawings are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Departments of Islamic Art and Ancient Near Eastern art. Iranische Felsreliefs, 1910 Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet, 4 Vols. 1911-1920 (together with Friedrich Sarre Paikuli, 2 Vols.
1924 Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra, 5 Vols. 1923-1930 Archaeological History of Iran, Altpersische Inschriften, 1938 Iran in the ancient East, 1940 Zoroaster and his world, 2 Vols. 1947 Iranology "Herzfeld, Ernst", Iranica Gunter, Ann C.. Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14153-7; the Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Finding Aids for the Herzfeld Archive in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Ernst Herzfeld Papers Collections Search Center, S. I. R. I. S. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Ernst Herzfeld-Gesellschaft. Ernst Herzfeld Papers collection from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries
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